MARK WAITE / PVT Joe Ponte, warden of the new Nevada Southern Detention Center, at right, and Charles Martin, managing director of facility operations in Division VI for Corrections Corporation of America. Advertisement

For Joe Ponte, the warden assigned to the new Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump, it will be the fourth startup correctional facility he's opened in three years with Corrections Corporation of America.

Ponte said he began his career with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections in 1969 where he retired after 21-1/2 years. He was hired by CCA to be the warden of the Bay County jail in Panama City, Fla.

After CCA closed out that contract in October 2008, Ponte said he went to work at a CCA facility in Tallahatchie, Miss., and is now working at La Palma Correctional Facility in Eloy, Ariz., one of the company's larger facilities with more than 3,000 inmates.

While state correctional systems would be moving quickly if they opened one or two facilities in five years, CCA opened five or six in the last few years.

Ponte said the company has a lot of expertise.

"I think we need to prove ourselves here and make sure all the things we stated we can do, we can prove to the community we are able to," he said. "We want to work with the citizens and the elected officials so it's a win-win situation for all of us. It's not an easy transition, we all understand that. We all need to work together on it."

Ponte said there are unique challenges with opening a new correctional facility like the one in Pahrump.

"There's all the political stuff, and not that it's negative or positive but it's all new," Ponte said.

The ins and outs of the facility, how to get things done, are already laid out in an existing facility, he said.

"Here everything is new: How we move inmates -- because we're going to be going back and forth to court, transports and stuff -- everything about the facility operationally. Even though we have a good plan, the day-to-day stuff you kind of figure out as you get operating, what works best," Ponte said.

The facility will house prisoners awaiting trail in federal court in Las Vegas and illegal aliens awaiting deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"I mean it's 1,000 inmates. Inmates are inmates. So you have to be careful how you handle them and if we have a good security program. But the startup piece, you've got so many pieces that have to fit together, from ordering supplies to getting staff trained to the hiring process, a lot of stuff going on in a pretty short span of time and a pretty definite time frame of when they've got to be done," Ponte said.

CCA has a schedule to begin accepting inmates by Oct. 1, 2010. While many construction deadlines are flexible in the industry, this deadline is firm.

"Every project I worked on with CCA, we've been on time or ahead of time ... when we opened La Palma we were two months ahead of time," Ponte said.

A lot of employees will be at the facility to help do the processing when inmates starting arriving, he said.

The new warden said he visited the detention center only once, but he will be working full-time in Pahrump probably in April. He will be in town more often in February and March, helping to get workers started coming to town and looking for housing.

Ponte will be responsible for doing the hiring except for his management team like the assistant wardens, who will probably be hired before he arrives.

CCA officials said they will form an advisory committee that will meet quarterly with the public.

"Usually it's people who show an interest. Where we have existing facilities that interest kind of dies out. Initially you may have a lot of people. So we'll try to get a cross section of the community in there. Basically it's a way to have a dialogue, a way to communicate issues, problems before they become issues, to talk about the prison, what we're doing, what's going on.

"If we have an event, this is what happened, this is what we did, this is what the response to it was, so people understand a little bit about how prisons work and what we do to try to keep inmates and the community safe," Ponte said.

When asked whether any incidents at the detention center would be promptly reported to the public, Ponte said. "I worked most of my life in public corrections. If we had an event in public corrections, basically we wouldn't bother talking to the media until we were ready. Here in private corrections, it's our reputation."

CCA works with law enforcement and emergency management to set up an emergency plan before the facility opens, he said.

"We need to know all the resources we're going to need in a worst-case scenario. We need to know beforehand where they're going to come from, how quickly they can get here, how quickly we can mobilize, and the only way we're going to know that is to have these meetings prior to an opening, with the local sheriff's office, state police agencies, local medical, all these participants in emergency responses."

The company plans to also have meetings with the public prior to opening, Ponte said.

"We want to explain the facility operations to the public, espeically the local neighbors, people who live next to the facility so they understand what the systems are, what really makes up the security of a prison or a detention center. We'll do a number of those events prior to opening," he said.

"I think when people come in and look at the plan, the building, the security systems that are designed, the average person gets a pretty good sense that it's a safe environment," Ponte said.